Rob and I have bought a small plot in Mid Wales near where we live and the plan is to build a 4-bed energy efficient house. It is going to drive us insane! In the meantime, as a university researcher and trainee archivist I'm going to explore some of the records out there on and effecting self-builds. Wish us luck…

Thursday, 24 November 2011

Making an entrance

I kept thinking I'll just wait till we have permission, then when we got an email version (after Rob followed it up and the version stamped and sent through internal mail had been sucked into oblivion for a few days), I thought I should wait until we get the hard copy, or a copy of the hard copy, which was then an anticlimax so I thought I'd wait till, well, a work deadline was met really...and then...a big digger came and made a hole in the hedge so I thought I really shouldn't put off another post.

We have a drive! Or, a hole in the hedge that we like to call a drive - I've left the lead I need to get the pic off my phone but for now here's some digger action:

Our neighbours:

And the space left by the lelandii:

Things have dragged so much we haven't made the best use of the unseasonally warm weather so we're kakking it a bit that last year's deep freeze will kick in at any moment but ideally we need foundations in before Christmas if we're to have a hope in hell of meeting the end of June deadline. Men are onsite as I speak chipping whats left of the lelandii and working out what to do about bunds and run off so we can get the environmental method statement in and get started properly.

When that is done the design-builder needs to work out if we're having traditional or 'floating' (?) foundations, design them and get going with the building regs people. I met him and a builder we hope to sub-contract some of the work to onsite on Tuesday but we still haven't got a letter of intent signed to stand in till the spec can be put in the contract so things are exciting on the one hand but anxiety inducing on the other....nice to see some change though.